Tabloid Talk

I just came back from the gym. I had to run off the afternoon donut with the kids. My rule at the gym is that as long as I'm doing 3.9 on the treadmill, I can watch any old trash on TV. Donuts for the brain. So, it's the E! Channel and Entertainment Tonight for that 50 minutes.

I watched the Kardashians for 1/2 an hour. I don't really get why these girls have their own TV show. They are rather stupid fashion victims. The leg wax truck must pull up to their house daily. Two weeks on an island and those girls would have unibrows, goatees, and hairy monkey legs. And I'm Italian, so I know about these things.

All the talk today was about Brad's and Angelina's $70 million dollar spread in France. How did those two get so rich? They must have more money than the gross nation product of one of their adopted kids' countries. Angelina can buy plenty of tent dresses to hide the varicose veins from her pregnancy. Still, that house looks pretty sweet.

Amy Winehouse is disintegrating. Her hair is falling out and her stomach is bloated.

Our celebrities are a strange lot -- baby collectors, semi-literates, exhibitionists, promiscuous, drug addicts, mentally unstable, pathetic, shallow. Without luck and proportional features, they would be living in double wides and working at Wal-Mart. Thanks to the gossip websites, we can have daily fixes of their foibles. We can tear them down and worship them at the same time. Too bad there can't be a stupid tax, because these people have too much disposable income.

I would like to order a new batch of celebrities, please. People with talent, brains, and class. I demand role models. Where should I look?

(One funny gossip item. Matthew McConaughey's brother, Rooster, named his kid Miller Lyte.)

Comments

[Chris Lawrence]

"I don't really get why these girls have their own TV show."

I think the current rule is one member of the family must have a sex tape with a C-list or higher celebrity, then E! will give them a show. If you can somehow work in a former C-list celebrity like Bruce Jenner, even better.

Engaging in HLA* in at least one Hollywood release also qualifies under a new amendment that gave us Denise Richards' show.

* Hness of LA may vary, viewer discretion advised.

[MH]

Why did Rooster misspell the already misspelled "Lite" in "Miller Lite?" Do people fear trademark infringement lawsuits even if they don't worry about what an admissions committee might think?? Going back a generation, why would somebody name one son after an evangelist and one after a farm animal? I'm hoping that it has something to do with "True Grit."

[John Crower McWhinny]

"Going back a generation, why would somebody name one son after an evangelist and one after a farm animal?"

What's odd about that?

[Julia]

"Too bad there can't be a stupid tax, because these people have too much disposable income."

Ah, but they're very good at disposing of their income.

[bj]

"Going back a generation, why would somebody name one son after an evangelist and one after a farm animal?"

There was a NYtimes article that said that the reason people don't do this anymore is greater gender equality means that the fathers don't get to do the naming (so, it's all the men's fault). A memorable line from the article was you can't believe the number of men who want their son to be able to say, literally, "Danger is my middle name."

(When I told my spouse, who is of the XY variety, he was bummed that our son's middle name is merely the name of an obscure mountain range)

[MH]

I still expect the brother of somebody named Matthew to be named something like Jim or Dave or Larry and the brother of someone named Rooster to be named something like Pilot Inspektor (sp?) or Kal-El (sp) or something. In addition to my John Wayne theory from earlier, BJ's comment got me thinking about family pressure for certain names. In my own family, it has been a tradition that the first grandson get the grandfather's name. Some kind of family pressure could get a Matthew from somebody who wanted to use more distinctive names.

[dave.s.]

A really staggering number of men indicted for murder have names of the formula John Wayne X, eg John Wayne Gacy, John Wayne Blair, John Wayne Thomson, John Wayne Glover. Just saying.

[Amy P]

Earl is a bad one, too.

Here's what Cacciaguida of cacciaguida.blogspot.com says about Earls:

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

"William Earl Lynd executed... Earl Wesley Berry set for execution... I must speak out: Does every Caucasian male on America's death rows have three names, of which "Earl" is one? And if so, why? Is "Earl" an aggravating factor under prevailing death-penalty jurisprudence? Does it prejudice juries? Is it malpractice for defense counsel in capital cases not to make their "Earl" defendants change their names? Or are these defendants given the name at sentencing? At death-row in-take? Or is is that death-penalty states are the states where all Caucasian males have "Earl" somewhere in their names, so it don't matter no-how?"